The Bodhi Veterinary Clinic in North Park is one of seven People's Choice Onion Awards available for the public to judge in the annual Orchids & Onions architectural contest. — San Diego Architectural Foundation

People's Choice Award voting

To vote on the Orchids & Onions People's Choice Awards, go online to orchidsandonions.org, review the choices and indicate your favorite. Voting ends at midnight Friday, Oct. 14. Information also is available on tickets for the Oct. 27 event, when the results will be released.

Public voting on the annual People's Choice Awards in the Orchids & Onions architectural contest will end Friday with the results to be announced Oct. 27.

The contest, held since the 1970s, is sponsored by the San Diego Architectural Foundation as a way to acquaint the public with good design in buildings, landscape architecture, graphics, planning, public art and other elements of the built environment.

Orchids go to projects for exemplary design and Onions to those that miss the mark, as determined by a panel of jurors. In recent years, a People's Choice Award also was instituted to give the public a chance to weigh in on what they see around them.

There were 144 nominations from the public and the jury will announce its selections in various categories at a gala ceremony Oct. 27 at the Balboa Theatre downtown. Architect Jim Gabriel is the foreman of the six-member panel of professionals.

Eight Orchid and seven Onion nominations are in the running with the People's Choice nod going to the ones that win the most online votes. Only one vote per account or email address is allowed.

Three projects appear on both lists -- The Cosmopolitan Hotel and restaurant in Old Town, the Bodhi Veterinary Clinic in North Park and the Sapphire condo tower in downtown San Diego.

Leslee Schaffer, executive director of the San Diego Architectural Foundation, said the jury chose the finalists based on the number of comments submitted by the public over the last few months as nominations were received.

She said only completed projects were selected for the public to consider, since they could visit the projects and judge them after viewing them. Consequently, such much-debated proposed projects as Balboa Park's Plaza de Panama plan for removing cars and parking from the center of the park are not up for public vote since they haven't been built yet.

But that park project has been nominated for an Orchid and an Onion and it remains to be seen if the jury will rule.